Day: July 9, 2002

Parents Television Council’s Wrestling Moves Were Fake

USA Today is reporting that World Wrestling Entertainment has reached a settlement with the Parents Television Council over claims the PTC made that four children died after attempting moves they saw on WWE’s Smackdown!.

The PTC agreed to pay WWE $3.5 million, retract the claims and publicly apologize for its statements.

The amusing thing is that PTC is an offshoot of Media Research Center. MRC is a conservative media watchdog whose mission is to point out inaccuracies and bias in the mainstream media.

Anyway, here’s the full statement of retraction from PTC/MRC head honcho L. Brent Bozell,

`Media Research Center (MRC), Parents Television Council (PTC), Dr. Delores Tucker, Mark Honig and I have in the past made statements regarding so-called wrestling deaths — children killed by other children alleged to be mimicking “professional wrestling” moves they saw on television.

We made such statements to members of MRC and PTC, the media, advertisers on World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) SmackDown! program, retailers that sell WWE-related toys and merchandise, public officials and the public.

MRC and PTC also produced a videotape as part of a fundraising campaign in connection with its “National Campaign to Clean Up TV Now!”, which advanced the notion that the murder of Tiffany Eunick was caused by the influence of professional wrestling on Lionel Tate.

The videotape included interviews with Lionel Tate’s lawyer advancing the notion that the murder of Tiffany Eunick, the victim, was directly caused by the impact that professional wrestling had on Lionel Tate.

We based our statements on media reports and source information. We now believe, based on extensive investigation and facts which have come to light since making those statements that it was wrong for MRC, PTC, their spokespersons and myself to have said anything that could be construed as blaming WWE or any of its programs for the deaths of the children.

Simply put, it was premature to reach that conclusion when we did, and there is now ample evidence to show that conclusion was incorrect. I now believe that professional wrestling played no role in the murder of Tiffany Eunick, which was a part of our “Clean Up TV Now!” campaign and am equally convinced that it was incorrect and wrong to have blamed WWE or any of its programs for the deaths of the other children.

Because of our statements, PTC, MRC and the WWE have been in litigation since November 2000. WWE vigorously advanced its position that neither it, nor “professional wrestling” led to these deaths.

WWE also contended that MRC, PTC, their spokespersons and I had misrepresented the number of advertisers who withdrew support from WWE’s SmackDown! television program after receiving communications from the PTC, some of which regrettably connected the WWE and SmackDown! to the deaths of children.

As such, WWE exercised its right to initiate this litigation, during which facts came to light that prompted me to make this statement.

By this retraction, I want to be clear that WWE was correct in pointing out that various statements made by MRC, PTC and me were inaccurate concerning the identity and number of WWE SmackDown! advertisers who withdrew support from the program. Many of the companies we stated had “withdrawn” or pulled their support had never, in fact, advertised on SmackDown! nor had any plan to advertise on SmackDown!

Again, we regret this error and retract any such misleading statements.

Finally, concerning the statements about child wrestling deaths, it was wrong to have stated or implied that WWE or any of its programs caused these tragic deaths. Specifically concerning the Lionel Tate case, recent developments lead us to believe that others and we were given, and relied upon, false information provided by parties close to the case.

The information that we were given and relied upon may have been designed to make a national example of the Florida murder trial, pinning the blame on WWE.

For example, we were told by a source that Lionel Tate was watching a WWE program when he assaulted Tiffany Eunick. In fact, Lionel Tate was watching the “Flintstones” and a cartoon entitled “Cow and Chicken.” We were also told, by a source, that Lionel Tate killed Tiffany Eunick while executing a wrestling move unique to a WWE character called the “Stone Cold Stunner”.

We have since learned that this was not true, nor was there any evidence that it was true. It is now well documented that after the Tate trial concluded, the presiding Judge said it was “inconceivable” that Tiffany Eunick’s injuries were caused by Lionel Tate mimicking wrestling moves.

Indeed, since the trial ended, Lionel Tate’s new lawyers have filed court papers in which they admit that the “wrestling defense” was, in their words, “bogus.”

Given these facts, WWE was within its rights to be angry at the MRC, PTC, their spokespersons and I for contacting WWE’s advertisers to go beyond complaining about WWE content but passing along accusations which we now know were false. Because I feel a simple retraction is not sufficient, I have personally extended my apology to Vince McMahon and the WWE on behalf of MRC, PTC, Dr. Tucker, Mr. Honig and me.

Through this letter, I now make this apology public and specifically directed to the advertising community that has in the past, is currently or may in the future consider advertising or sponsoring WWE programming.

The PTC can have its concern with the content of WWE’s television programming – though these concerns have been reduced significantly over the past years as a reflection of WWE’s changed standards. But nowhere in that debate, including in the correspondence and statements to the advertising community, should there have been any discussion of “wrestling” deaths.

I regret this happening. It wasn’t fair to WWE.

And I say this emphatically: Please disregard what others and we have said in the past about the Florida “wrestling” death. Neither “wrestling” in general, nor WWE specifically, had anything to do with it. Of that I am certain.’

What Is Conversant?

MicroContent News asks,

What is Macrobyte’s Conversant and what does it do?

  • Is it weblog software? I’m confused!

Well, I use Conversant to manage this and other web sites and I’ve written a few things about Conversant, but the short version is that Conversant is a lot like a tub of Legos — it can do pretty much anything you want it to do.

Weblogs? Absolutely. Conversant will let you create as many weblogs as you want within a web site. This site has three or four different weblogs, though only the main page is really active. The interface is pretty straightforward with text entry boxes at the bottom of the weblog page.

But Conversant is so much more. I could go on for pages about all the features, but let me just highlight the two I use most frequently,

– E-mail lists. Conversant allows you and others to subscribe to your weblog/web site as an e-mail list. Anything you post to your weblog/website goes out to the list and anything you or anyone else posts gets posted back to the website. Once you use this, you’ll wonder why this isn’t a standard feature on all content management systems.

– Completely customizable metadata. The best way to explain this is to show it in action. Visit my animal rights faq and poke around a bit. This is a huge, dynamically generated topical index of all the content on that site. Everything there starts as a weblog entry and is filtered automatically to the correct categories using a system that is surprisingly simple to set up and customize. As others have noted, I’m pretty obsessive about the number of categories I use, but you could make this as simple or as complex as you want.

And I cannot emphasize how helpful this is. For example, jump to my 9/11 page which tracks all of the stuff I’ve written about the terrorist attacks. Plus, if you look at the right hand category, there’s a nice “Related Topics” sidebar that is, again, generated dynamically. It takes just a second or two to add or delete a category.

Whether they use Conversant or not, I would really like to see more webloggers start using some sort of system to organize their weblog entries. The basic weblog interface is excellent for seeing what’s new at a site, but it’s pretty rotten for finding topical information. I’d like to be able to go to somebody’s weblog and quickly find all the entries about Microsoft or Noam Chomsky or the RIAA. And I use Conversant because it’s the only software I know that lets me indulge my own category obsessions with ease.

Gary Francione on the War Path

The Summer 2002 issue of Friends of Animals’ Act’ionline includes a long interview with Gary Francione in which Francione makes abundantly clear his disdain for Peter Singer, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, non-vegan activists and anyone else who deviates ever so slightly from his abolitionist perspective.

Francione does not shy away from the implications of his belief that all property interests in animals should be abolished,

Gary Francione: . . .If, however, we did accord animals this one right not to be treated as property, we would be committed to abolishing and not merely regulating animal exploitation because our uses of animals for food, experiments, product testing, entertainment, and clothing all assume that animals are nothing but property. If we accepted that animals have the right not to be treated as our property, we would stop–completely–bringing domestic animals into existence.

I am not interested in whether a cow should be able to bring a lawsuit against a farmer; I am interested in why we have the cow in the first place.

. . .

FoA: So we need to do away with seeing-eye dogs?

Gary Francione: If we are serious about animal rights, we have a responsibility to stop bringing them into existence for our purposes. We would stop bringing all domestic animals into existence for human purposes.

Francione launches several broadsides at the animal rights movement, including arguing that “there is no animal rights movement in the United States. There is only an animal welfare movement that seeks to promote the ‘humane’ exploitation of animals.”

Francione’s main targets on that count are Peter Singer whose ideas have been “disastrous” for the animal rights movement. Francione goes on to say,

Ironically, Singer and PETA together have eviscerated the animal rights movement in the United States. . . .

The movement has set Singer up as some type of deity. To disagree with Singer’s views is interpreted by many as an act of disloyalty to the cause of animal rights. The result is that the movement is now saddled with a representative who praises McDonald’s, who espouses that humans with lives somehow considered as having lesser value can be sacrificed for the rest of us, and who announces that “mutually satisfying” sexual relationships may develop between humans and nonhumans.

Francione also attacks animal rights activists who are vegetarians but not vegans. According to Francione, “Anyone who maintains that she or he is an ‘animal rights’ advocate but is not vegan cannot be taken seriously.”

The odd thing is not that Francione holds such extreme views, but rather that he sincerely believes that the animal rights movement would have a much better shot at achieving its goals if it adhered to his strict abolitionist stance.

Lets hope he can convince the rest of the animal rights movement of that proposition.

Source:

Interview with Professor Gary L. Francione on the State of the U.S. Animal Rights Movement. Friends of Animals, Act’ionLine, Summer 2002.